


The Ghosts Giving Up

by Ember Nickel (primeideal)



Series: Fanfictive Idylls [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1998-99, Challenge Response, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-15
Updated: 2012-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-31 05:56:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/Ember%20Nickel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luna and the ghosts, set in the 1998-1999 school year. Originally written June 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghosts Giving Up

**Author's Note:**

> My audition piece for the "Fanfiction Idol" contest (no prompt). I've had the basic idea behind this particular story for quite a long time. The basic premise was meant to show up towards the end of a long multi-chapter story I've kind of abandoned. But I've reworked the timeframe here, so this piece covers more ground than that chapter would have and is meant to stand on its own.

_One_

Every September for the previous two centuries, give or take, the Fat Friar had watched the first years, hoping for more Hufflepuffs. He wanted more housemates, and knew he'd be there for them. When the Hufflepuffs were too shy, too modest, to stand up for themselves, he could defend his house.

1998 was different.

There was nothing that the Fat Friar needed for himself, but he saw how desperate the school was for what Hufflepuffs had to give. Effort. Loyalty. Open hearts, to welcome everyone. Some of the old barriers had broken down—the blood purity requirement was smashed as thoroughly as several balconies that were by then pebbles. Classical divisions between years had blurred away, as those forced out of school and those who left early returned, the standard curricula at a loss to accommodate them. And the time for heroic, suicidal courage was mercifully past. Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor: all had had their day, but Hogwarts needed Hufflepuffs then.

And they were  _there_.

A few in knots, helping their newest fellows find their way around the school. Many more mingling with other houses, guiding more first years or simply teaming up to repair a banister. Not standing out, not calling attention to themselves, but making the right choices. When Peeves called "Ickle firsties, can't get past me, eh!" Hannah Abbott was there, pointing out another staircase that would get a terrified pair of Slytherins off to Transfiguration class.

"Proud of your dumb old badger, are ya?" Peeves asked, while idly preparing an unpleasant surprise for the next person to touch an old handrail.

"She's not mine," said the Friar. "I thought they needed someone to follow, but they can...perhaps, walk side by side."

"Uh-huh," said Peeves, nodding vigorously mid-somersault. " _Side by side, cause the halls are wide, cause all the rooms are blown apart. Firsties walking, Peevsie blocking all their paths, ooh watch me dart_!"

The Fat Friar watched Peeves. He might as well, he decided; the Hufflepuffs could certainly handle themselves.

_Two_

"Happy Deathday, Sir Nicholas!" Myrtle breezed through a wall as she cornered the ghost of Gryffindor outside the Transfiguration classroom.

"Thank you very much!" he smiled. "It's a..." "Pleasure," at least by the standards of a Deathday, seemed to be stretching the truth a bit. "I mean to say, fancy meeting you here!"

"You didn't want any festivities? That's all right, I'll go back to my bathroom."

"Er, no, that's not it," he rushed. "It's only, that, I wasn't planning anything big this year. It's just my five hundred sixth, not a very exciting number. After all the excitement of the five hundredth I didn't see any reason to splurge. And to be honest, I've had enough of the Headless Hunt to last a lifetime."

He tilted his head to one side, thoughtfully (it stayed put). "A  _life_ time. Yes. Not a death-time. Wouldn't mind showing them up some day once they've learned manners."

"What's so big a deal about the number five hundred, anyway?" she said, as Nick followed her up a flight past staircases. (Not up a flight _of_  staircases. Up a  _flight_  past staircases.) "It's Muggles who like fancy zeroes, wizards go for twelves and sevens and suchlike."

"That's true," he sighed. "But I suppose I'm more like a Muggle, in some ways. Never to cast a spell again..."

"You also can't really eat or sleep or do any of that. But you  _can_  see Hogwarts. You're a ghost, that's all there is to it!"

"That's all there is," he repeated, shaking his head slightly. "Sometimes I wonder whether the Sorting Hat really saw any Gryffindor bravery in me."

_Three_

Myrtle was so lost in contemplation, a dreamy smile spreading across her face, that she didn't see Peeves approaching.

"Thinking about how handsome I am? _  
Every little teenage ghost  
Thinks about Peevsie the most..._ "

"No," Myrtle interrupted. "I was just remembering how nice Hogwarts looked when it was full of death."

"When you died, you mean?"

"No," she said—a bit worried, as it was already the longest they'd spent in conversation without her running off in tears for about thirty years. "Last May, when everybody was dying. Lots and lots of people." Dead adults and dead children. Harry Potter was dead for a little bit, but then he wasn't, and Tom Riddle was dead too. Myrtle had never liked him.

"Ooh, yes, there was utter chaos. That was very exciting," Peeves reminisced. "Ought to have another proper battle, everyone likes me helping out then."

"Nobody came back."

"Eh?"

"There were sixty-some people dead and not any ghosts! Not even little Colin Creevey. He was quite nice."

"So what? You'll get to haunt new firsties every year.  _Ickle firsties—_ "

"But they all grow up!" Myrtle wailed. "Even Olive Hornby died and I can't haunt her anymore."

"You always knew she'd die, didn't you?  
 _Sixty years to have your tease  
Call whatever names you please.  
Now you're just stuck in the bath  
On and on, oh what a laugh.  
Haunt and moan and chant your jeers,  
When you're a ghost, sixty years  
Isn't that long an amount.  
I thought Ravenclaws could count!_ "

Myrtle accelerated out of the bathroom and down whatever hallways she could, eventually winding up where any real Ravenclaw would go: the library. She glided through the shelves, startling another Ravenclaw.

"Oh, hello," said Luna Lovegood. "Have you come for a book?"

"Oh, let's all give Myrtle a book to read! No, silly girl, I can't turn the pages!"

"I'm very sorry," said Luna. "Would you like me to read to you?"

"If you can find books about keeping stupid poltergeists away from you, maybe."

"I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that," said Luna, "but I can try."

She idly picked her way through several books, often glancing only briefly at one before putting it aside. "It doesn't look very promising," she sighed. "Let's see...Poltergeists are bound to specific _locations_ , i.e. buildings and cannot be removed. Contrast with ghosts, who have freedom of movement although..." Luna narrowed her eyebrows, which were dyed a rather fetching yellow on the day. "...impossible to corroborate...numbers have certainly varied over time...exaggerated claims about the equinox are known even among Muggles."

"Eh?" said Myrtle. "What does that have to do with getting rid of..."

There came Peeves again. "Miserable Myrtle's in the library with Loony Lovegood, ooh!"

"I'll check the book out," said Luna gamely. "You can come by Ravenclaw Tower sometime, we'll read it together."

_Four_

"Do you know," Professor Vaughan asked as she collapsed into a chair in the staff room, "whether any of my students are Muggle-born?"

"Not off the top of my head," said Headmistress McGonagall, glaring at her. "But why on earth does it matter?"

"Oh, it's nothing," Vaughan blushed, "nothing important. It's only that I'm afraid I'll make a mistake in front of someone who knows better and they'll make me look like a fool in front of the entire class."

"Well, even the half-bloods might have some Muggle relatives," Professor Urbins pointed out. "If you spend all your time worrying you'll never get anything done, will you now?"

"Pollux, you're not helping."

"Now, now, Susanna," said Professor Sprout, handing the young Muggle Studies professor a biscuit, "not to worry. Maybe this is a chance for you to open the floor up to your students, ask them what they know about Muggle achievements first. Everyone has these feelings when they first start out."

"Codswallop," Professor Binns muttered. "It isn't like first-years come in knowing how to whip up potions or Transfigure anything, do they? Maybe  _me_  they could show up, if they actually paid attention in class, but they all think they're too good for History of Magic."

"Some of them  _made_ that history, Cuthbert," said McGonagall. "Look at Dennis Creevey, Natalie McDonald, all the young D. A. students. They're too young to drop the core classes but they're old enough to change the world."

"That is as immaterial as...as...er, me," Binns trailed off. "I don't have a capable replacement in all of Britain even if I could leave the job."

"Oh, are you thinking about retiring?" Sprout asked conversationally. "You've certainly earned a nice breather."

"I...think about a lot of things," he said defensively, and reminded himself that he dealt in facts.

_Five_

"Give over, Luna," said Orla Quirke, bouncing onto a couch. "We've got Gobstones to shoot."

The Thursday nights of 1999 had been increasingly tense in Ravenclaw Tower. At first, when it was just Luna and Myrtle, Luna could point out that "Myrtle can stay here too, she is a Ravenclaw.  _Is_ , Myrtle, if you keep thinking of yourself as a has-been we'll never get anywhere." And then, when the Grey Lady stood beside them—saying nothing, simply listening to Luna read—well, it wasn't like the Ravenclaw students could band together to kick the Ravenclaw ghost out of Ravenclaw Tower.

But then the Bloody Baron started coming, and that was the last straw. Nick or the Friar they'd let in, even Binns as long as he kept his mouth shut, but the rest of Ravenclaw could not tolerate the sound of rattling chains when they had studying to do. There were times when Luna was the only living human in the common room, but as soon as others showed up, she'd gotten used to leaving. No matter how much she told them she wanted to learn things, there'd be two or three of her fellow students in a snit about how some things were just  _known_  to be true.

"Come on, then," she said. The ghosts following behind her, she made her way out of the common room and through the corridors.

"Where are we off to?" asked Nick. "The library again?"

"I was thinking we could try the Room of Requirement."

"I thought that didn't work," the Baron moaned.

"It didn't for me. I know the Heliopaths ravaged it, but I think it should still be viable...I wonder if any of you could get in? Just pass through the wall before there's even a door. You might find what you need."

"A book?" said Myrtle. "We can't turn the pages."

"We might as well give it a try," said the Friar.

Binns led the ghosts through the blank wall. Luna put her weight on first one foot, then another, hoping a door would somehow materialize. It didn't, but neither was there any sign of the ghosts. Had something gone wrong?

No, maybe something had gone right! Maybe that was all it would take to let them go on, stepping through the wall where they'd find what they most needed. This was how disappearance worked for other people: abrupt, yet without closure. Pleased at this possibility, Luna strolled down the hall and back to Ravenclaw Tower. Ignoring the others' eyebrows, she pulled out her Charms textbook and began reading.

Half an hour later, Professor Binns drifted through the walls, muttering under his breath. "...a literal interpretation of the word "imprint" suggests that ghosts are most akin to magical portraits, which survive on the earth while those they represent remain elsewhere. However, this theory is, as quoted in Bertrand de Pensées-Profonde's  _On the Nature of Death, Whether Natural or Untimely, and Certain Wizardly Aftereffects Thereof_ , "absolute bollocks.""

"Ooh, Professor, do you have a photographic memory?" asked Luna.

"What? Er. I suppose so, yes. Rubbish newfangled devices, your photography machines are."

The other Ravenclaws were so impressed by Professor Binns' use of the word "bollocks," they didn't tell Luna to kick him out of the tower.

_Six_

"We'll shoot for June, then? I'll be done with my exams," said Luna. It felt strange, trying to order people hundreds of times older than her around. But they simply nodded, Myrtle and Nick and the Friar and Binns and the Grey Lady and—

The Bloody Baron opened his mouth, which took so long Luna thought he was yawning. "This may be...unwise."

She waited a long moment, but when he did not follow up, asked, "How so?"

"I...chose to remain on Earth for a reason. I thought myself...unworthy to travel beyond this life. My...reason remains as...relevant, as ever. I still feel undeserving, and after so long, it seems untoward to meddle with fate."

While the Grey Lady regarded him with something almost like pity in her gaze, Luna closed her eyes for a moment, thinking. She didn't want to speak hastily. "Sir, may I ask you a rather...personal question?"

The air seemed dry. Maybe ghosts made things musty.

"You may," he finally decreed. "But you might not receive an honest answer."

"That's fine," she said. "I actually don't know how personal a question this is, for ghosts. But, er, how old are you?"

"Excuse me?" His response was reflexive, more surprised than offended.

"I mean, how many years ago were you born?"

He needed to take a minute to count on his fingers, which involved some unpleasant clanking. "One thousand ninety-three."

"And how old...I mean to say, how many years have you been a ghost?"

More quickly this time, he announced, "One thousand fifty."

"So that's...about twenty-one times longer you've been a ghost than properly alive, yes?" He did not seem to have any inclination to repeat her arithmetic, so she pressed on. "And you've been here at Hogwarts this whole time? With all the Slytherins that have come through?"

"I have."

"All the  _Slytherins_. For better or worse, very many of them have left their mark on the wizarding world. You've probably influenced some of them, somehow—a comment here, silence somewhere else. Have you not?"

"...I may have," he says, after a long pause. "But it is impossible to know how things would have been, otherwise."

"Exactly!" she grinned. "You've probably influenced the course of history even more in...in Hogwarts than you did in life." Was it just her, or was the Grey Lady trembling? "If you keep judging yourself by what you did before, you'll never get a chance to be judged on what you've done this last millennium."

The Baron hesitated, then said, his chains staying rigid and silent, "So be it. I will try."

Luna couldn't think of anything to say, so she simply walked away as first Nick, then Binns, flitted off. She heard the Baron as he floated after the departing Grey Lady and asked, in a low voice, "Why did you stay?" She did not hear an answer.

_Seven_

Luna spent most of the longest day of 1999 in her room. Exams were over, but she was too nervous to talk to anyone, and the ghosts kept their distance. Maybe they were explaining things to Peeves, or McGonagall. The Headmistress had pulled Luna aside one day in the hallways and asked her, pointedly, how she was doing. Luna responded politely, and truthfully, but said little. Even Headmistresses could be stricken by Wrackspurts, and it would never do to try and explain to her in such a willful state.

An hour before sunset, she walked towards the entrance hall, waving to a skeptical Filch as she did. She'd have to remind Peeves not to give him too much trouble.

She wished she had some kind of instrument...a horn, a fiddle, even a drum. Her father once had a very nice flute. Idly, she wandered east of the castle, kneeling down at the forest's edge and picking up a stick. She tapped the ground with it a few times, trying to beat out some sort of rhythm.

It snapped in two.

Luna shivered, in spite of the warmth, and paced, and waited. Myrtle was the first to come out, but drifted slowly, taking in all of the grounds. Then came the Grey Lady, the Bloody Baron a few paces behind. Nick and the Friar, swapping jokes, took their time showing up, while Binns rushed behind. "Sorry," he said. "Had some very,  _very_  overdue library books to return. Madam Pince should be quite pleased with the fines, I expect."

"What did you use books for?" said Myrtle. "You can't turn the pages."

"That might have had something to do with why they were so many decades overdue."

"If we're all ready, then?" Nick urged.

"Yes," said Luna. "Er, I looked a very long time for a Blibbering Humdinger, but I haven't seen one since last year. And Professor Dumbledore always did say music was a very strong magic...Mr. Baron, could you keep the beat, please?"

"The what?"

"The beat. You know, one, two? Er, one, two, three, four?"

The Bloody Baron stared at her long and hard, and then ventured, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight?"

"Er, no, not quite. If you could clink your chains in time. On the beat?"

"It's like dancing," the Grey Lady impatiently explained. "You stamp your feet, in time."

"I'll be busy... _swaying_ ," he almost spat, "in time anyway. I should think that'll make enough noise."

"All right, then," said Luna. "You all remember what to do?"

"Yes, yes," said the Friar. "Go on."

She stood at the edge of the forest, then took a few steps forward. The setting sun cast a long shadow behind her. Above it, she knew, the ghosts were settling in, lying flat.

Luna began to dance. On her own, the first few paces, and then she heard the clink of the Baron's chains. As she whirled, her shadow spinning behind her, the ghosts too bent and changed shape, mirroring her every motion until it seemed she had seven shadows, not one. Or maybe she had one in seven layers.

The sun fell lower and she turned away from the castle, leaping side to side or scurrying backwards rather than squint. She tried jumping and whirling at once, eyes shut tight. Once or twice she was fast enough to see the swirling ghosts, but she tried to not look too hard at them.

The Baron was not too helpful as far as providing rhythm went; his chains continued sounding and resounding, but in one continuous blur rather than beats she could keep track of. Perhaps it would have helped if he was landing on the ground, but instead they all continued reshaping themselves, in line (and curve) with her decreasingly-proportionate shadow.

At last the sun was so low, she could face forward without encountering glare, and she knew it could not be too much longer. Suddenly conscious of how exhausted she was, she stood still for a moment, slowly rubbing her hands together to spin her wand. She'd been gripping it the entire time, sending magic through it until it almost burned her hands to grasp, but she was not casting any spell. Instead, it acted as a conduit to focus all the magic turning around her.

She passed her wand to her left hand alone, pointing it to the sky as she spun around once, twice, thrice. Then, facing the west horizon, Luna leaped one final time.

One moment, she stood as if floating above the ground, her shadow and the ghosts stretched into the forest behind her as long as they would be. The next, she hit the ground at the moment the sun went down on the longest day.

Luna stood a few moments, waiting for her heart to return to some kind of normal pace. She was sweating heavily, and her wand hand still burnt. After what seemed like a couple of minutes passed with no change, she began to worry a little. While she could hide an injury well enough, it would be poor appreciation of Ollivander's labor if she burned out her wand after barely a year. _Lumos_ , she thought, not wanting to go back to everyday verbal magic right away.

A small orb of light formed at the tip of her wand. Good enough. She walked forward, taking her time, and did not look back. The sun had set; her shadow was gone. Perhaps the rite had failed, perhaps the ghosts were hiding in the forest rather than tell her that she had failed, that they could not go on. But she was not inclined to believe that.

She'd give them time, then start sending an owl or two. Discretely: she felt no need to call attention to herself. But if she'd pulled it off, she might be needed in the future.

At least for a short time. Unbidden, memories sprang into view as she walked west towards the castle. Voices, prophecies, ghosts of the past.

" _At the Solstice will come a new..."_

" _...and none will come after."_


End file.
